


i hold only hounds equal to the task

by trill_gutterbug



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017), Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Gen, Symbiotes - Freeform, canon AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24364561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trill_gutterbug/pseuds/trill_gutterbug
Summary: Frank watches two soldiers turn inside out on the floor of the hermetically sealed dome, screaming until their throats shred, thrashing until their bodies do the same. The alien sludge lurches out of their corpses after, prickling and oozing around the chamber, slapping up against the plastic barrier.“Please remember,” says Colonel Schoonover to the rest of them, “the contracts you all just signed.”
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26





	i hold only hounds equal to the task

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken wildly out of context from [here](https://www.shatnerchatner.com/p/the-best-thing-about-very-old-recipes).

It’s top secret, they tell him - experimental, advancing the field of warfare in unprecedented ways, resulting in the protection of American lives. Plus, it pays a full five figures higher than what he’s getting on a sergeant’s salary, and, well… He and Maria have been trying to buy a house before the baby comes. Can’t be worse than anything else he’s done. 

When he nods and says, “Understood, sir,” because this ain’t his first fucking rodeo, Colonel Schoonover shakes his head. 

“No, Sergeant Castle, I don’t think you do understand. Come with me.”

Turns out, it’s the sort of top secret that gets whole continents nuked out of existence. World-ending top secret. End of the human race top secret.

Turns out it’s aliens.

~*~

Frank watches two soldiers turn inside out on the floor of the hermetically sealed dome, screaming until their throats shred, thrashing until their bodies do the same. The alien sludge lurches out of their corpses after, prickling and oozing around the chamber, slapping up against the plastic barrier.

“Please remember,” says Colonel Schoonover to the rest of them, “the contracts you all just signed.”

Franks remembers. He steps through the airlock with his fists clenched. The alien - the symbiote - slinks around the perimeter of the room toward him. Frank grits his teeth so hard they creak. He’s never just stood and waited for death to come at him like this. 

Beyond the barrier, the rest of the men stand stiff, pale, aggressively still. Except one. A skinny kid, non-regulation haircut, cheekbones like cut glass. Big black eyes. Frank catches that one’s gaze. He thinks, in the second before the symbiote pounces on him, that there isn’t any fear in it at all. Only eagerness, and hunger. 

~*~

 **Finally** , says the symbiote. 

Frank, on his knees on the floor, head hanging between his arms, gasps for air. He’s had out-of-body experiences before, knocked from his own head by pain or exhaustion or the adrenaline of a firefight. This isn’t that.

 **You’ll do** , says the symbiote. 

~*~

There are four symbiotes altogether, and three dead Marines. But, in the end, eventually: four symbiotes, four living hosts. 

“Excellent,” says Schoonover, after the final round of tests is finished and the medics declare them conditionally stable. “You’re confined to this facility until further notice. Get settled, gentlemen.”

It’s Frank, the kid with the crazy hair whose name turns out to be Billy Russo, Gunner Henderson, and Frank's buddy Curtis Hoyle. They're assigned separate rooms, big thick doors with big sturdy padlocks on each, and told to adjust to their new situation. “Get to know each other,” says the tech, vibrating with an emotion that’s either anxiety, excitement, or some ugly mix of the two. “We'll be right here watching.”

The rooms are wired with every kind of surveillance and biometric equipment Frank's ever seen and a bunch he never has. There's a chair, a cot, a toilet, and a sink. Frank thinks, head swimming, that he's going to stumble to the cot, sit down for a second, and get his fucking bearings, but instead he does a lap around the room, his body moving without his say-so. He prowls beneath the cameras, peering up at them. 

**We can speak this way without being overheard** , says the voice in his head. It feels like sandpaper on the inside of his brain. He groans, pressing both hands to his temples. 

“Stop it,” he whispers. 

**Isn’t this what you signed up for?** asks the symbiote. Its silent voice carries a distinct edge of cruel amusement. **To serve your country? You knew what you were getting into.**

No, he didn’t. He hadn’t even really believed it was real until he’d seen the goo slithering around the chamber and watched three good men die for no reason he could understand.

 **Don’t be naive. It’s unbecoming.**

Frank’s body takes him over to the cot and sits him down. He watches his left hand rise and turn palm-up. A thick dark sludge, opalescent grey at the edges, pools in the cup of his fingers. He watches it warily, aware with a distant morbidity that this thing could kill him without even trying. Break his spine from the inside, squeeze his organs to paste, maybe just burst out through all his pores at once and turn him into wet tissue paper. He’s not real clear on what the exact relationship is between their bodies. He can feel it squirming around in his chest, through his belly, but here it is also, rising painlessly through the skin of his hand. 

“I’m… Frank,” he says aloud. It feels instantly stupid, introducing himself like a dumbass stumbling into a fancy cocktail party in dirty jeans. Wildly inappropriate. Too little too late, maybe.

The symbiote makes a not-sound, a chuckle that raises all the hair on Frank’s body. 

**Hello, Frank** , it says. **We are Punisher.**

**Author's Note:**

> Billy's symbiote is, of course, named Jigsaw. :)


End file.
